Clear your names in the allotment of votes for the Abia Central APC – Onuigbo senatorial primaries

A candidate for the Abia Central senatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Hon. Sam Onuigbo, has urged those sponsoring media attacks against him to come clean about their role in the bizarre allocation of votes during the party’s May 18 senatorial primaries.

He noted that the sting of truth stunned the architects of the run-off election that took place during the failed senatorial primaries, stressing that as a result the culprits were suddenly afraid of their clandestine activities against the APC coming to light.

Onuigbo, who was responding to a media report dismissing the petition of well-meaning stakeholders of the APC in Abia Central Senatorial District against the confusing primaries of the APC in the area, urged sponsors of the media reports to stop orchestrating further damage to the image and reputation of the APC in the South East.

Recall that a group, describing themselves as leaders of the Abia Central chapter of the APC, had written a petition titled “Calculated Campaign of Falsehood” and addressed to the party’s National Chairman, Professor Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda, alleging that allegations of irregularities in the Onuigbo primaries were aimed at destabilizing the party ahead of the 2027 general elections.

But, in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja, on Thursday, Onuigbo, a former two-term member of the House of Representatives and sponsor of Nigeria’s Climate Change Act, challenged the authors of the petition to prove the veracity of the magical figures gifted to the three contestants in the abortive Abia Central Senate primaries.

He charged the shadowy supporters of the media attacks on him to do themselves a favor by helping the APC National Working Committee (NWC) make sense of the vote numbers that donated 36,935 ballots to a single contestant in an imaginary contest where two others garnered 11,457 and 5,833 votes.

Following the scandalous hijacking of the primary electoral process, a ranking member of the Sixth and Seventh Senates, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu, petitioned the national leadership of the APC stressing that it was offensive to have to wait the whole day without any official coming to his Osisioma Ngwa 2 ward, or any part of the entire Osisioma Ngwa Local Government Area, to conduct the senatorial primaries.

“This disgraceful conduct by some overzealous individuals in the Abia Central Senatorial Primaries has cost the APC not only in terms of its reputation but also the existing structural harmony in the party. For example, as we speak, Senator Nwaogu has disqualified the APC from the vexatious refusal to participate in a simple exercise like senatorial primaries,” Onuigbo noted.

While lamenting that some desperate politicians in the Abia State chapter of the APC were bent on importing the virus of impunity and violation of transparent process of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) into the APC, the former lawmaker said it was because of such rogue behavior that he joined the APC in his second term in the Green House.

“Let them help the national leadership of our great party make sense of this conundrum: In a senatorial district that has about 56,860 members, how did the perpetrators of the confusion in the Abia Central Senatorial Primary Elections manage to secure 36,935 votes that they gifted to a single candidate, when no election was held in most wards of the six local government areas that make up the Senatorial District?

“The authors of the fabricated results for the Abia Central Senatorial primaries should also tell Nigerians where they obtained the certificate of return issued to the presumed winner, when the national leadership of the party has categorically denied that no such document except the certificate of return of Mr President was printed,” Onuigbo demanded.

He regretted that instead of doing something positive to promote and project the APC in Abia State and Abia Central Senatorial District, the enemies of due process have resorted to harmful confusion that has made the party in the state a laughing stock.

“I wish to encourage the leaders of our great party to scrupulously get to the roots of the confusion that engulfed the conduct of the Abia Central Senate primary elections, as well as the reputational damage caused by those who hijacked the process for their own narrow interests,” Onuigbo added.